Justifiably confident in their electronics expertise, the folks at Sony have concentrated their efforts in tablet manufacture in creating the thinnest and lightest possible models. The Sony Xperia Z2 is, as of this writing, the company’s latest such example of the philosophy and happily lives up to the high benchmark the big company has set.

Sony has managed to reduce the already-sleek Tablet Z by some 70 grams (0.2 lbs) and 0.5 millimeters in thickness. A slight tweak has added a welcome matte-finish rear panel for easier gripping. Excellent news that the amazing ability for the tablet to be submerged in water for 30 minutes has been retained; also onboard again is a fantastic display, this time of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Naturally, hardware and software upgrades have been implemented to good avail. A quad-core 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor is as quick as that of any peer tablet, and the 3 GB of RAM is a serious feather in the cap for the Xperia Z2. Just 16 GB of storage space is provided, but a micro SD card slot allows adding up to 64 GB more. Speakers are now in the front, which helps out the performance and sound quality noticeably.

Something of a minus is the mere six hours or so of average battery charge, but we say this is a small negative against a plethora of plusses. Sony has unquestionably solidified its position alongside Apple and Samsung among the tablet universe’s big three with the impressive Xperia Z2.